2-21-13 Waconia Patriot Letters to the Editor

Great! Congratulations Wildcat girls basketball players and coach Carl Pierson and his staff, winners of their second consecutive Wright County Conference championship.
This group of young ladies had to overcome recovery from injuries which occurred last season, as well as players incurring injuries during the current season. Ignoring adversity and having the determination and stamina to rally late in close games will be a lasting memory of the 2012-13 team.
This team represents an excellent example of student athletes from four different high school grades blending their time and talents to reach a goal established at the beginning of the season.
Continue to play hard and as a team. Good luck as you begin sectional competition. Go Wildcats!

Lloyd Laumann
Waconia

GOP must stick to its conservative agenda

To the editor:

If you had an opportunity to listen to or read about what President Obama and Gov. Dayton have in store for you, it isn’t encouraging. Minnesotans will likely be hammered from two directions, Washington and St. Paul. Both are big government ideologues which means job one is to grow government at the expense of the private sector.
The promises of higher taxes on the wealthy reduces available capital from private investment. This limits the growth of our economy and the potential revenue to government. Democrats will never admit that government spending benefits are fleeting and finite. Yet private sector investments are long lasting — with real jobs and expansion.
How perverse is the Democrat statement that government doesn’t have a spending problem but a revenue shortfall!
This Keynesian Economic theory that the Democrats cling to feeds their insatiable appetite for money by relying on higher taxes and the printing of new dollars. This drive to punish the rich serves to stifle the entrepreneurial spirit that adversely affects the middle class with fewer jobs and higher prices. Printing more dollars serves to fuel an inflationary potential that is inevitable. According to new research from the Federal Reserve in St. Louis, they conclude in part: “government stimulus shrinks the private sector.”
The President is very clever in that he is campaigning to improve the economy yet he is the reason for its continued paltry growth!
In a recent N.Y. Times poll and a Luntz Focus group, the participants did not like the direction the country was headed but yet felt the President was doing a good job trying to improve conditions! The GOP is missing an opportunity here.
Gov. Dayton has the luxury of a Democrat controlled House and Senate. The Republicans are left to push the “NO” button and watch as government spending ramps up. To date, the Gov. wants $3.6 billion in new taxes including $2.1 billion in new sales tax. Republicans can only blame themselves for this. They failed to deliver a clear concise message to the voters last November.
The hardest lesson for the Republicans to learn, whether in St. Paul or Washington, is that they should be extremely wary when “reaching across the aisle.” “Compromise” to a Democrat is getting 90 percent of what they wanted. It is a new paradigm that must be recognized. While an ill advised public bemoans “gridlock,” we should recognize that no action is better than improper action. Democrats are masters at this because they demand complete allegiance to their platform.
My view is that the GOP must stick with their conservative agenda and continue to educate the voters as to the benefits of a vibrant economy. With so many Americans living off the largess of big government, this is becoming a harder lesson to get across. The Republicans must endure the losses of the last election cycle as the result of their mixed messaging. Purging of moderates from the party is necessary, even if it means some bitter internal battles. If they fail to clean house, I see no future for a party which continues to say one thing and do another.
Sequestration will be the next test to see if the Republicans can stand firm. The Democrats and Obama have inadvertently boxed themselves into a fiscal corner. They are trying to illicit aid from the GOP to join them in “kicking the can.” We shall see how resolute the Republicans are with the mandated spending cuts. Failing that, Obama’s defeat of the GOP will be complete.
They will have rendered themselves impotent for a long time. While elections matter, candidate integrity reigns supreme.